"Clos de Vougeot" Grand Cru AOC 2021

A Grand Cru of cool clarity: precisely drawn fruit, fine-grained tannin, 13.5% ABV. The house style of Domaine Hubert Lignier steps back to let the site speak.

The Clos de Vougeot spans 50 hectares, enclosed by stone walls built by Cistercian monks in the 12th century. Hubert Lignier farms a small parcel on the mid-slope, on limestone-rich clay. The Lignier family has been established in Morey-Saint-Denis since the 1880s; today Laurent Lignier leads the domaine in its fifth generation, with the Clos de Vougeot holding having come into the family's possession over the decades.

Pinot Noir, fermented with its own yeasts after a long, cool maceration; the proportion of whole clusters has grown over the years at the estate. Aged in French oak with new wood deliberately kept restrained, spread across four coopers so that no single barrel dominates the wine. In the vineyard, the domaine has worked without synthetic products since 2007.

Red cherry and blackberry, with violet, forest floor and a touch of cedar. Silky texture, fine tannin, vibrant acidity, a long and clear finish. 2021 brought frost and uneven ripening to Burgundy; the cool vintage shows here in the precise definition of the fruit.

Roast duck breast with cherry sauce, coq au vin, rosé-cooked veal fillet or saddle of venison with mushrooms. Among cheeses, matured Époisses and Comté pair particularly well.

In 1973, Hubert Lignier began bottling his own wines rather than selling them off in bulk; the grape supplier became an estate with a name of its own. The cellar in Morey-Saint-Denis, occupied since 2008, works by gravity alone: from crushing to bottling, no pump touches the wine.